Five Tips for Writing a College-Application Essay

1. Turn off your phone. And your music. And your Internet connection. Writing well requires sitting alone with your thoughts, no matter how restless you get, until you can hear your own voice.

2. Follow school rules. Colleges work hard to develop applications they believe will yield the information they need. Respect the process by heeding word limits, following essay prompts, and submitting only your own work.

3. Ignore everyone else’s rules. Contrary to conventional wisdom, no subject is off limits here. What matters is your approach: your perspective, the quality of your thinking, the care you put into your sentences. Don’t write what you think you “should” write about. If there’s something interesting you can’t get out of your head, something that makes you excited and maybe even a little bit sick to your stomach, it’s probably a perfect essay topic.

4. Look forward, not back. Your transcript and application will demonstrate your achievements. Now is not the time to recap. Instead, think how you can talk about your accomplishments with an eye to where you want to go in the next four years. Think as a storyteller. Imagine yourself day-to-day on campus: walking a snowy path to class, sitting up straighter in a fabulous seminar, talking with a brilliant classmate, interviewing for your first post-college job your senior year. What are you obsessed with? What are you making of your opportunities there? Let these hopes and ambitions guide your drafting.

5. Find someone who did not raise you from infancy to proofread your essay. There is no mother on earth who can read her child’s college essay and not feel the world crashing down: she wants it to be perfect, but also this means you are about to leave home. Take pity on her (and your dad, too), and find a nice, neutral friend with good grammar and punctuation skills to give it the once-over.

Ms. Crawford’s novel, “Early Decision: Based on a True Frenzy,” will be published Aug. 27 by William Morrow

Related: WSJ’s Jarrard Cole speaks with Lacy Crawfordabout the stress surrounding college applications and how to write a standout personal statement.

My youngest daughter, despite our offers to "help" wrote her own essay without sharing its contents with us.
Needless to say, she got in to the colleges of her choice. She was on her way to adulthood! She graduated and is successfully working... all on her own!

2:05 pm August 24, 2013

St. Anselm wrote :

Most likely by the time you finish college you will be in a huge debt, with poor job prospects. Start a business instead.